Great Streets Campaign

Nearly two years after the first parklet arrived in San Francisco, a new study provides an empirical assessment of reclaiming parking spots for public space.

Construction on the Cesar Chavez Sewer and Streetscape Improvement Project will be completed a few months behind schedule in summer 2013, according to the SF Department of Public Works.

A trial project diverting private automobile traffic off Market Street will become permanent following a unanimous vote by the SFMTA Board of Directors today. The changes have made the the city's main thoroughfare more inviting for people who walk, take transit and bike by requiring eastbound drivers on Market to turn right at 10th and 6th Streets.

Organizers of the nascent Mission Community Market hope to transform an underutilized block of Bartlett Street in the Mission into a thriving weekly market, where vendors sell their goods and kids play in the street after school. As an initial test, the Mission Community Market Collaborative (MCMC) is throwing a block party and fundraiser on Saturday, June 19th, at Bartlett and 22nd Street, both as a way to advertise the idea and to raise money for its implementation.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom's office this weekend experimented with the temporary removal of a handful of parking spaces on Powell Street between Ellis and Geary Streets to give  holiday shoppers in and around Union Square more space to navigate the crowded sidewalks.

The San Francisco Great Streets Project (GSP) has been collecting pedestrian counts and street user surveys, and has used time-lapse photography, to measure users' perceptions about the quality of the public realm before and after the 17th Street plaza treatments were in place. The results of the surveys show what many readers of Streetsblog have been saying all along: residents feel the sense of community and the quality of the pedestrian realm have gone up markedly.